I’ve been on Shimano since the Ultegra R8100 launched in 2022. Before that, I tried the previous generation of SRAM AXS, and it wasn’t for me. The shifting felt less refined than what I was used to, brake feel was lacking, the hood shape never sat right in my hands, and the front derailleur was finicky — get the setup slightly off and you’d get rubbing, or worse, a dropped chain under load. I went back to Shimano and didn’t look back.
Then SRAM launched Red AXS E1 in May 2024, and everything I heard about it made it sound like a genuinely different product. Better ergonomics, dramatically improved braking, and a front derailleur that actually works without a ritual. After a year of reviews from people who’d actually put miles on it, the consensus was hard to dismiss — this wasn’t the same SRAM that frustrated me.
I wanted to try it, but Red pricing made it easy to put off. A complete group runs well north of $3,500 once you account for a crankset and cassette, and that’s before any sale. Red has always been the tier where the last few grams come at a steep premium, and I’ve never been convinced that premium makes sense for most riding situations.
That changed on June 17, 2025, when SRAM launched Force E1. The pitch was essentially this: everything that made Red E1 worth talking about, now at Force pricing. The brake system is the biggest one for me personally. The old design used a vertical pull orientation for the master cylinder, which limited braking power and feel. The E1 redesign flips that to a horizontal push orientation — the same change that made Red’s braking feel like a different product category. SRAM claims 80% less effort from the hoods and 33% less from the drops. Whether those numbers are exact or marketing-rounded, the direction is real and the reviews back it up.
The lever shape is also meaningfully different. The previous generation SRAM hoods were bulkier than I liked, and that was part of why the fit never clicked for me. The E1 levers are slimmer, with a slight outward kink that works naturally with modern flared drops. Force also picks up the bonus buttons from Red — one per side, customizable through the AXS app — which adds functionality that wasn’t there before.
The front derailleur was my biggest gripe with old SRAM, and from everything I’ve read, the E1 FD is a real fix rather than an incremental tweak. That alone was probably the last thing keeping me from seriously considering a switch.
On price: Force E1 comes in around $1,499 on Amazon right now — a significant discount from MSRP — and that’s the kind of number that makes the decision easy to justify. Red costs meaningfully more and the performance gap between the two is, by most accounts, narrow. You’re paying for weight at the Red level, and while the weight savings are real, they’re not the kind of thing most riders actually feel on the road. Force E1 is where the value math works.
Check current pricing on the SRAM Force E1 AXS groupset on Amazon.
I’m planning a new build around this group. I’m not ready to disclose what it is yet, but more on that soon. Once I have real miles on it I’ll report back on whether the improved braking and ergonomics hold up to what the reviews have been saying — and whether SRAM has finally won me over for good.